Lewis Hamilton admits he is concerned by his grid slot after qualifying second for the United States Grand Prix and will ask the FIA to clean the left hand side of the grid.

Having pushed Sebastian Vettel all the way in Q3, Hamilton lines up second on the grid but is concerned by the grip on that side of the track. The new circuit has proven very slippery and with the left hand side of the grid being off the racing line, the even numbered grid slots are expected to have a big disadvantage compared to those on the right hand side.

Hamilton admitted the much talked about turn one was not something he was thinking about, but that he would as the FIA race director Charlie Whiting to ensure the grid is cleaned up.

"I'm not really concerned about the first corner, I'm more concerned about the dirty side of the grid," Hamilton said. "I did a little launch from it earlier on in FP3 and it was quite slippery so hopefully tomorrow is just about getting a good start. It's so wide in turn one that I don't think really much can go wrong generally; I might be wrong! Obviously I don't want to get in the way of Sebastian's race but I do want to win so I'm going to try my best to get through cleanly.

"I hope we can get away well; we're going to ask Charlie to clean that side of the grid so that the people on that side get an equal start and hopefully I can fight Sebastian down to turn one. But after that it's quite a difficult circuit to follow on because it's so fast so position will be very important."

Having been unexpectedly close to Vettel, Hamilton admitted he felt he had nothing to lose going in to the final part of qualifying.

"It was (close), I'm very, very happy with my lap. I saw in Q2 that they were obviously massively quick - about a second or something like that - so I didn't know where I was going to find that; I just thought that the Red Bulls were going to be in the lead. I just went in to Q3 and I just pushed as hard as I could."

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